African e-Science Commons - ZENODO

This community is for researchers, developers and research support teams to store their work in the Open Access, e-Science, e-Infrastructure and scholarly discoverability domain in Africa. 

(thanks to Hilton Green from Stellenbosch Univ)

This Guy Drew a Cat. You Won’t Believe What Happened 4 Centuries Later

"....The argument that Twitter can bear only lightweight engagement ...........ignores an important point: Scholars and journalists live on the Internet like everybody else, and sometimes a small spark can ignite larger fires...."


Read more!

Altmetrics could enable scholarship from developing countries to receive due recognition.

Altmetrics could enable scholarship from developing countries to receive due recognition.

"....The scholarly community is abuzz with altmetrics and the related (but different) term Article Level Metrics......   altmetrics may not remain alternative for long. Whether they supplant or complement the JIF, they bring with them a promise, but no guarantees, for developing regions....."

Academic librarians are encourage to engage with this concept in the interests of promoting the scholarly research of their institutions

What Matters to Academic-Library Directors?

Whether they work at a big research university, a small four-year college, or something in between, academic-library directors share a “resounding dedication” to teaching information literacy to undergraduates. Beyond that, the priorities they set for their libraries depend on the size and nature of their institutions and how many (or few) resources they have to work with.

Chronicle of HE article

6 Terms that Instantly Reveal You as a Librarian

Ellyssa Kroski — January 29, 2014

Few professions are as steeped in tradition and esoteric knowledge as librarianship. We have our own dialect packed with specialized jargon that only others in our vocation would understand. To decipher all of this we even have our own dictionary! And although we do our best to avoid most of these terms in casual conversation, there are times that we just can’t help but use them, and they unequivocally identify us as librarians. What terms and phrase have earned you confused looks?

Book quiz: can you recognize these classic last lines?

A quiz to try for fun in your spare time!!

Walking the talk - interesting blog post from Kevin Smith of Duke University

Walking the talk:
"All of the presentations at the SPARC Open Access meeting this week were excellent.  But there was one that was really special; an early career researcher named Erin McKiernan who brought everyone in the room to their feet to applaud her commitment to open access.  We are sometimes told that only established scholars who enjoy the security of tenure can “afford” to embrace more open ways to disseminate their work.  But Dr. McKiernan explained to us both the “why” and the “how” of a deep commitment to OA on the part of a younger scholar who is not willing to embrace traditional, toll-access publishing or to surrender her goals of advancing scholarship and having an academic career...."   

 (Thanks to Hilton Green for the alert to this blog post)

Duke University’s first Scholarly Communications Officer - See more at: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2014/03/07/walking-the-talk/#sthash.qfzGZTwW.dpufKev

(Kevin Smith is Duke's first Scholarly Communications officer - Debbie, Ujala, Roelien and I met him at the Berlin 12 OA conference in Stellenbosh)

All of the presentations at the SPARC Open Access meeting this week were excellent.  But there was one that was really special; an early career researcher named Erin McKiernan who brought everyone in the room to their feet to applaud her commitment to open access.  We are sometimes told that only established scholars who enjoy the security of tenure can “afford” to embrace more open ways to disseminate their work.  But Dr. McKiernan explained to us both the “why” and the “how” of a deep commitment to OA on the part of a younger scholar who is not willing to embrace traditional, toll-access publishing or to surrender her goals of advancing scholarship and having an academic career. - See more at: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2014/03/07/walking-the-talk/#sthash.qfzGZTwW.dpuf

All of the presentations at the SPARC Open Access meeting this week were excellent.  But there was one that was really special; an early career researcher named Erin McKiernan who brought everyone in the room to their feet to applaud her commitment to open access.  We are sometimes told that only established scholars who enjoy the security of tenure can “afford” to embrace more open ways to disseminate their work.  But Dr. McKiernan explained to us both the “why” and the “how” of a deep commitment to OA on the part of a younger scholar who is not willing to embrace traditional, toll-access publishing or to surrender her goals of advancing scholarship and having an academic career. - See more at: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2014/03/07/walking-the-talk/#sthash.qfzGZTwW.dpuf

All of the presentations at the SPARC Open Access meeting this week were excellent.  But there was one that was really special; an early career researcher named Erin McKiernan who brought everyone in the room to their feet to applaud her commitment to open access.  We are sometimes told that only established scholars who enjoy the security of tenure can “afford” to embrace more open ways to disseminate their work.  But Dr. McKiernan explained to us both the “why” and the “how” of a deep commitment to OA on the part of a younger scholar who is not willing to embrace traditional, toll-access publishing or to surrender her goals of advancing scholarship and having an academic career. - See more at: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2014/03/07/walking-the-talk/#sthash.qfzGZTwW.dpuf

All of the presentations at the SPARC Open Access meeting this week were excellent.  But there was one that was really special; an early career researcher named Erin McKiernan who brought everyone in the room to their feet to applaud her commitment to open access.  We are sometimes told that only established scholars who enjoy the security of tenure can “afford” to embrace more open ways to disseminate their work.  But Dr. McKiernan explained to us both the “why” and the “how” of a deep commitment to OA on the part of a younger scholar who is not willing to embrace traditional, toll-access publishing or to surrender her goals of advancing scholarship and having an academic career. - See more at: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2014/03/07/walking-the-talk/#sthash.qfzGZTwW.dpuf